"Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" by Judy Blume

I did not expect to like this book. Turns out, I don't like this book, so my expectations were correct. And that is entirely due to:

"Look for the other books about Peter, Sheila, and the irrepressible Fudge!"

     -the back cover

"Fudge should be repressed."

     -me to my family midway through reading this

Fudge is the protagonist's incredibly annoying younger brother. He is, as you may have guessed, incredibly annoying. So kudos to Judy Blume for making him authentically awful, but at the same time, he's so awful that he ruins pretty much the entire book for me. Much like he ruins pretty much the entire book for his older brother, come to think of it.

Really, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing is a cautionary tale on how toddlers (in general) will be as awful as they can get away with, and if you parent your toddler wrong (i.e. letting them get away with things) the toddler will be awful. If you ever find anyone who doesn't believe in original sin, just point them at a small child who's been parented badly (i.e. allowed to get away with things).

But hey, fourth graders aren't twelve! So there's that, at least.

Note: To be clear, I have nothing against twelve-year-olds. It's just that they comprise approximately 96% of all middle-grade fiction protagonists, so I'm kind of tired of reading about them.

I expected to dislike this, because I expected it to be a ten-year-old girl having school drama. Instead I disliked it because it was a nine-year-old boy having family drama with his incredibly annoying younger brother. I've never had an incredibly annoying younger brother, but I'm glad of that fact and have no desire to experience such a sibling vicariously.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for Fudge.

2 stars. Which rating it only manages because I generally reserve one-star ratings for things like "wildly inappropriate content" or "portraying Satan as a good guy".

(Endnote: I'm starting a petition to put Fudge in a timeout and ignore him until he behaves.)